San
Antonio:
Comment: City employees need their money now: September 20, 2001

Express-News: Commentary
Comment: City employees need their money now
By Wade Rathke
San Antonio Express-News

Web Posted : 09/20/2001 12:00 AM

If you work, then open your next pay envelope. Imagine your feeling when you
notice that you did not receive the amount you expected, but more than 24 percent
less.

If you expected to see $1,000 in that check, you found $760 instead. If you
expected $100 in the check, you found $76.

In fact, imagine that you had been expecting a raise. You had heard and read
that you were going from what you had to a "living wage." Rather than
get a 32 percent raise, you got zilch, nada, nothing.

Imagine that when you found your check way short and your raise long gone,
that you raised this simple error with your boss. Perhaps it was a computer
or clerical error?

Simple problem? Easy to solve? You would be wrong!

Local 100, Service Employees International Union, AFL-CIO, and our members
have raised this issue before the mayor, City Council, and directly with the
City Manager Terry Brechtel and her staff. Brechtel has stated publicly that
she intends to raise workers to no less than $8.50 per hour by Oct. 1. She has
been silent on the issue of correcting the mistake for the last year. She told
our union she was studying the problem.

In the adopted budget for the current fiscal year, 2000-01, there are 26 references
to "all city employees" receiving a living wage in the budget, including
in the introductory letter to the mayor and council from the city manager. Twenty-two
of these references are found in the specific departmental appropriations which
detail how specific allocations are being made to bring all city workers up
to the proposed standard. There is only one reference in the adopted budget
to paying the living wage to only full-time and part-time workers, and that
reference contradicts the sentence found immediately beforehand in the same
paragraph!

We wonder what is it about "all" that does not mean all? This is
not hard. A mistake has been made, so it needs to be gotten right. This is what
you would expect from your boss. This is what city workers expect from their
boss. We do not need an apology. We do need the back money, and we do need this
to be fixed now!

Turns out this problem of "temporary" workers and a minimum pay standard
are the tip of the iceberg. Thousands of workers are affected. Many - in fact
most - of them were out of compliance with the Civil Service regulations of
the cty of San Antonio, and should have been converted from temporary to permanent
status after 90 days.

Others are finally permanent now, but spent months and years inappropriately
classified. All are owed back wages, seniority, holidays, and vacation. We work
hard for the pay. We have the right to expect that the rules be followed. When
mistakes are made, they need to be made right. That's the way you want it on
your job, right? That's the way we want it as public servants of the cty of
San Antonio!

Time is money, and it's time for our money to be paid correctly for our time!

Wade Rathke is the chief organizer of Local 100, Service Employees International
Union, AFL-CIO.